I Can't Think Of A Case Where

Debate Doesn’t Really Change Things. It Gets You Bogged In Deeper. If You Can Address Or Reopen The Subject With Something New, Something From A Different Angle, Then There Is Some Hope. ... People Are Suddenly Gazing At Something Else And Pausing For A Moment. And For The Duration Of That Gaze And Pause, They Are Like Reflectors Of The Totality Of Their Own Knowledge And/or Ignorance. That’s Something Poetry Can Do For You, It Can Entrance You For A Moment Above The Pool Of Your Own Consciousness And Your Own Possibilities.

So Hope For A Great Sea-change On The Far Side Of Revenge. Believe That Further Shore Is Reachable From Here. Believe In Miracles And Cures And Healing Wells.

It Is Difficult At Times To Repress The Thought That History Is About As Instructive As An Abattoir.

Loyalism, Or Unionism, Or Protestantism, Or Whatever You Want To Call It, In Northern Ireland - It Operates Not As A Class System, But A Caste System.

Poetry Cannot Afford To Lose Its Fundamentally Self-delighting Inventiveness, Its Joy In Being A Process Of Language As Well As A Representation Of Things In The World.